By David Fear. His name is Paddington, and for close to seven decades, this tiny London-based bear has delighted discerning young readers with his extreme politeness, his propensity for getting into misadventures and his loyalty to family and friends.
And its sequel doubled down on the whimsy, the quirk and the Wes Anderson-style formalism in a way that turned both audiences and millennial-hipster film critics into rabid fans. Not to mention that it officially kickstarted the current Hugh Grant renaissance.
Fingers, human and otherwise, were crossed that a third Paddington escapade would be a charm, or at the very least, not sink the franchise in syrupy goo. We can confirm that there is no cause for alarm. Brown previously played by Sally Hawkins. But it retains the sunniness, the sweet yet unsentimental emphasis on empathy for your fellow man and bear and the slightly cracked sense of humor of the earlier movies in a way that makes it feel like a natural continuation.
All that, plus it lets an internationally renowned actor go full Alec Guiness and features the single greatest onscreen singing-nun in the history of motion pictures. More on the movie star and the songbird sister in a second. First, we get an origin story. Once upon a time, a tiny cub in Peru climbed on to the branch of a orange tree. The branch snapped. The animal fell in the river.
He was nearly washed away into oblivion. Eventually, she encouraged her adopted ward to go to London, he was renamed Paddington by the Brown family because they found him at Paddington station and, well, you know the rest. In the years since our hero left for the land of Big Ben, his surrogate-momma bear has settled down in the Home for Retired Bears, located deep in the jungles of Peru and run by a holy order of nuns.
